


Golden Eclipse

by notbug (KageKashu)



Series: Ymir's Children [4]
Category: Guardians of Childhood & Related Fandoms, Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Golden Age, M/M, Pre-Slash, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-01-24 10:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1601414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KageKashu/pseuds/notbug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few years after the latest events of Fairy Tale, Jack gets caught up in one of Jökul's games, and ends up crashing into the distant past. Jack is getting a little sick of this shit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bad Sci-fi Tropes

**Author's Note:**

> Unlike Fairy Tale, this will have a more structured style. Fairy Tale will still be continued, but in a more leisurely fashion.

Jökul's idea of art was a strange thing, Jack thought, looking at the arrangement of glowing hourglasses. One of the three biggest ones was full of Dream Sand, its golden glow was pleasantly warm as his fingers brushed the glass containing it. Just opposite of it was an hourglass of equal size containing a similar amount of Pitch's stolen Nightmare Sand. Directly between the two was the largest of the seven hourglasses present, the sand within which was luminescent green, and Jökul claimed that it was the sands of Time - a claim that Jack doubted. Of the other four, two were full of mundane, non magical granules, which were a pretty golden white (one) and a gorgeous rainbow of colors (the other). The last two, the smallest of the lot, were full of pure silvery white and ominous purple sands. Why was it that Jökul even had such things? Jack hoped to never find out. 

The tiny, white filled hourglass was in his hand, being examined when he heard the clatter of hooves in the open hallway behind him. Now, Jack was _fast_ , but the creature making the racket was upon him before he had the time to do more than think _What the hell?!_ with alarm. A large, gray dappled horse slammed right into him before it could stop itself, and Jack felt sharp pains as he was smashed into the hourglasses, and then... 

Everything spun nauseatingly. He quickly grew dizzy, and he was pretty sure he was hallucinating, because he was surrounded with something that looked like a bad B rated sci-fi film wormhole. Magic, he could accept easily, as it had defined his existence since he had drowned. Bad sci-fi clichés were something he didn't have to accept, so he closed his eyes, trying to block it out. Without his eyes to tell him what was happening, it just felt like he was falling. Spinning and falling, which was bad enough at times, even with the wind to catch him. It could make his stomach turn on a bad day, and this was certainly not a good day, not now... He had no idea for how long he fell, but after what felt like forever, he was jolted back into something that felt real when he landed hard, on his back, on a solid surface. He grunted as the superfluous air in his lungs vacated. 

Nothing had happened yet, and he was already afraid to open his eyes. He ached all over, and the surrounding energy _jangled_ at the edges of his nerves, for the lack of a better word. He lay quietly, just breathing, until something large and heavy landed on his head with a loud _crack_. His eyes flashed open at the sudden, renewed pain, even as several other things fell from above to land on and around him. It ended with a lady's purse smacking into his face. Jack rubbed at his head, blinking away the tears that had come to his eyes, only to see that his hand was bleeding, a shard of glass sticking from it. "Owwowow..." There were grains of silvery sand sticking to the edges of the wound. Actually, there were bits of sand all over him, and not all of it was white. And more blood, too, from glass inflicted injuries on his left side. His right felt _bruised_ , but didn't look so bloody. 

Putting the pain out of his mind for the moment - it would heal well enough even if he did nothing, but he planned to clean it later to quicken the process - he glanced around at his surroundings. A fairy ring of alien trees, the trunks of which looked like marble and spun glass, their strange shapes crowned with golden leaf buds and pale green flowers, sprouted from the greenish loam surrounding him. He observed them with his head tilted to the side, thinking, _How weird._

Now that he was looking, the bizarre trees weren't the only strange plant life in his vicinity. Thick strands of purple fuzz - somewhat like an unfortunate choice in shag carpeting - grew around him lushly, and he rubbed his fingers against it, wondering if it was as soft as it looked. It seemed to be the local equivalent of grass, and Jack wondered just how far Underhill he must be for things to be this far off from what he considered normal. He frowned at the "grass", rubbing again at the lump on his head. He was probably getting blood in his hair, but wasn't so sure that even mattered at this point. "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto," he muttered, rolling to his feet, which hurt much less than the rest of him. He swept out his toes, instinctively searching for his staff, and when they didn't connect with it, he looked down. Panic began to gnaw at him as his eyes darted furiously around. "Oh crap! It's gone!" 

Alien winds tugged at him, responding to his distress, but their gentle caress did nothing to soothe his panic. The last time something happened to his staff, he felt it snap, like a pain in his chest. Now, there was just a strange, disconnected feeling. It wasn't broken, he could tell, just infinitely out of his reach. He whimpered, and after several long moments of not heeding the strange wind's tugging, finally let it pull him into the air. Without his staff, it felt _wrong_. Ugh, and the plants smelled weird, not like chlorophyll at all, which didn't help. He sneezed at the scent of them, and his eyes watered as he was flipped over in several dizzying circles as wind currents that had never known his touch rolled over him curiously. These winds were gentle in their playfulness, unlike those he had first ridden, and didn't drop him hastily, instead lowering him back down with a soft caress that begged him to ride them some more. He sneezed again. There was something... 

He sniffed, sneezed, and sniffed again. As he tried to figure out what he smelled, he picked the glass that was still in his wounds and caught in his clothes off of himself. The sand that he had seen before, at the edges of his wounds, and on his clothes, was mostly gone now, and Jack grimaced at the idea of it having been flung into the wind. He hoped that didn't come back to bite him in the ass. Over the scent of fresh blood that had been renewed by the picking, he could smell something vaguely familiar, something _green_ , something that reminded him just a bit, tantalizingly, of home. Of course he had to follow it. 

But, first things first. He gathered the stuff that had fallen on him, and froze the glass shards into a big enough ball of ice that they wouldn't come out of until he could dispose of them properly - he wasn't about to leave broken glass in a place children might come to. The thing that had hit him so hard was a wooden hobbyhorse, made for a child bigger than him, painted a pastel green with pink accents. There was one of the palace banners and a wall scroll he had admired some days ago, and a bunch of little things (such as an enchanted hand mirror and a cell phone) which he unceremoniously shoved into the purse that had landed last. The ice ball was placed in there too, and it would last for as long as he needed it to. Once he had everything settled about his person, he let the wind lift him up again. 

Since there was little he could do where he was - which he still thought might be Underhill, though that belief was fading quickly in the face of such a gentle breeze - he whispered to the strange wind, "Take me to what I'm smelling, would you?" 

Soon, it smelled like people. A lot of people, a lot sooner than he expected. There were strange structures, made of colored metals and brightly stained glass, for as far as he could see. It was as though where he landed had been a small park, and nothing more. The strange buildings were covered in intricate trellises, and green and purple vines with russet and pink flowers, and... He made a sound of confusion as he landed on what seemed to be a fence. It looked like the set for a fantasy RPG, with a dash of sci-fi for flavor. _What am I even seeing?_ he wondered, eyes roving the thin (and growing thinner) crowds of people wandering what looked like, on second, or maybe third glance, an outdoor bazaar. He gasped when he saw a face he knew. It didn't look the same, not exactly. The ashen skin tone was instead a golden bronze color, and the hair... The hair was so black that it seemed to absorb light, rather than reflect it, unlike the shadowy, ashy black he was used to seeing on the man. Those differences aside, it was still, visibly so, Pitch Black! "Damnit," he groaned - loudly enough to garner some side-eye from the very - mostly - human looking locals. Knowing Pitch, this was going to turn out weird. Even though he really did like Pitch, the man could be oddly useless in some situations. "I was hoping more for Glenda, rather than Elphaba - but hey, beggars can't be choosers. I'll take what I can get." 

With that, he made his move, straight for the as yet unaware not-Pitch Black.


	2. Calm Before the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kozmotis doesn't know what to do with this spirit, and why did he take him home?

* * *

Kozmotis was getting tired. It had been a long day in a long week, and if he really got into it, the year had been pretty damn long too. Time seemed to stretch out. The past few years since his wife had died seemed to stretch into eternity, and he found himself contemplating, sometimes, in the deepest recesses of his mind, where no one would be likely to overhear, that he might be edging unknowingly toward his breaking point. The only thing that seemed to make anything worth anything anymore was Emily, but even she couldn't hold off the weariness. When he saw her, it was lifted briefly, but... The war was getting to him. Leave was mandatory, and he had to lead by example, but it had gotten to where he felt guilty, taking it. It was one thing when he was lower in the ranks, but now... He had too many people counting on him, and he couldn't afford mistakes. If he didn't stop every now and again, he knew that he would eventually make one that was unforgivable. 

His time at the market was stressful, if productive. He always attracted stares these days, and it made him uncomfortable, and liable to be snappish when he returned home. One person was staring particularly hard, and he didn't so much as turn his head to look at them, even though it bothered him, instead he continued on his way, head held high and a box of market goods perched against the crook of his arm. He wasn't expecting for his enthusiastic observer to try to corner him, and he was all prepared to deal with one of his "fans" when the boy finally got in front of him, babbling incomprehensibly. 

His first thought, the one he would be ashamed of later, was a faint, stunned, _Pretty..._ Then he began to take in details. Stunning eyes, moonlight streaked blue, pale skin with a barely there flush the shade of o'ana blossoms and stark white hair with a streak of what looked like blood smeared into it - likely from the half closed cut on one of the boy's hands. His eyes flicked down and back up the lithe figure, and saw, much to his alarm, even more blood. He would have looked like a child that had been caught in some terrible accident if it weren't for the evident cheer in his expression, even as he continued to speak words that Kozmotis still couldn't understand. Then, there was something he did - or thought he did. 

"What did you say?" he asked the spirit - for that was certainly what the boy was - warily. 

In a voice that sounded too mature for his appearance, the boy repeated the same slew of sounds as before. Again, somewhere in the middle of it was part of Kozmotis's name. "...Pitch..." The boy continued to babble, but that sound, "Pitch," came up once more, even as the babble trailed off into a curious, questioning sound. 

Kozmotis shook his head. No, it was still "Gibberish," he stated with a sigh. "Here I thought I'd heard my name." He frowned thoughtfully down at the boy, who seemed unconcerned with the fact that he was still bleeding. The boy frowned back, started to speak again, then stopped, blinking rapidly. The next string of babble came out in a querulous, frustrated tone. "Do you understand what I'm saying?" he asked gently. The boy nodded, and Kozmotis said, "Go away." The affronted look on the boy's face startled him into chuckling. "Yes, you do understand me, don't you?" He shook his head and began to walk. "Come along then. As much as I value my privacy, I'm not going to leave you with nowhere to go." 

The spirit seemed a little lost, and by the time they reached Kozmotis's home Erosa was in the sky, proving that it was getting just as late as he felt it had been. Emily came out to greet them when they got there, and he sent her back inside. "Go to the main room. I'll be there shortly." To the spirit, he turned and said, "As for you, let's get you cleaned up before you frighten more of the neighborhood." It was likely enough that his nearer neighbors had already spotted them, and as most civilized folks were wont to do, were planning to corner him later about it. 

The boy was calm enough throughout his wounds being tended, and his fingers were as cold as stone, prompting Kozmotis to wonder just what sort of spirit he was. Every now and then, he would try to say something to Kozmotis, and finding that he still was not understood, trailed off with a dissatisfied tone. The scabbing on his hand was rougher than it should have been, instead of softening properly beneath the warm, wet cloth it was wiped away with - there was dirt ingrained in the depths of the cut on his hand. 

"How did you manage this?" Kozmotis muttered aloud, not really expecting a comprehensible response. The boy just made a scoffing sound that couldn't have been meant as anything but derision, and twisted just enough to drop his leg into Kozmotis's hands. With such a calm patient - not that he considered himself any sort of healer - it was quick work. "I'm sure you can find a way to entertain yourself without breaking things," he said, once he was finished. "I'll see what I can do about your presence here in the morning." In the meantime, he had promised his daughter that he would visit with her. 

After that, he left the boy to his own devices, certain that within a day or so, his world's energy would mesh with that of the spirit enough for them to communicate. It was irritating, but he imagined it was worse for fully mortal beings. None of his people were completely of flesh and blood anymore, nor had they been in a long time. As he went to spend the evening with his daughter, he pondered the strange connection he had made with a spirit that wasn't even in sync with Erosa. 

His own behavior this evening, now that he was looking back on it, was atypical. He was on leave, hoping to spend the week with his daughter, and yet... He brought a _stranger_ into his home. No matter that the spirit had gone directly to the upstairs balcony as soon as Kozmotis had managed to clean the strange grit from his wounds (distracted as he was by all that smooth pale skin). No matter that there had been a barely there tinge of panic at the edge of the boy's thoughts. If he had been thinking, he would have called for someone to come and take him somewhere else to spend the night. Kozmotis valued his privacy. He valued his time with Emily. 

Yet, he couldn't understand what had gotten into him, why he took this strange spirit into his home. Looking back on it, it made no sense at all. He should have taken the boy to the station, had the Diplomatic Bureau handle him, or something. Instead he was, what, waiting until morning? 

"But who was he?" his daughter asked, kicking her feet and scowling. He hadn't come to the main room soon enough for her taste, and she was turning her irritation into an attempt to be obnoxious. Thank the stars she was failing horribly. 

"I have no idea," he admitted, tugging her close to hug her and tuck her under his chin. "Who do you think he is?" 

Emily was quiet for a long moment, thinking deeply on his question. "He's so shiny so..." Kozmotis really wished that he could see her face right now, because he was sure that she was about to make up something ridiculous. From the childish glee she radiated, he could tell that she knew it too. "He's the tsar's long lost son! And he's going to live with us and be my new mommy." 

A weird chuckle built up in his throat. Kozmotis really had intended not to laugh at whatever she said, but... He had been right, because it was pretty ridiculous. "I'm sure he has places to go, sweetheart, other than here." 

"Maybe he'll go with you when you leave and protect you. I asked great-grampa to give you someone to help you and Riff, 'cause you're always so tired when you come home..." This time, she was far more serious, but he couldn't help but wince when she mentioned his grandfather. 

"Emily, you know there's reasons we don't ask Grandfather for things," Kozmotis admonished quietly. He couldn't bring himself to censure her seriously, though, because there had been genuine worry in her, when she said that. Although the thought of her asking _him_ for anything was disquieting, he could only hope that she wasn't right about where their guest had come from. Because while that explained how the spirit hadn't been synced with Erosa, it implied that his grandfather had simply plucked the unlucky spirit from another planet only to drop him on Kozmotis. Stars, he hoped that she wasn't right. He did love his grandfather, but... He happened to find him to be one of those spirits that made less and less sense as he grew older. "I hope that wasn't his answer to you. And you need to stop asking him for things. Who knows what he'll drop on us next!"


	3. The Longest Day Ever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A night and the better part of a day pass, and Jack learns a little about the boogeyman's sleeping habits... among other things.

* * *

Either the day was dragging on horribly, or this new world had a different sort of rotation than Earth. The sun was still in the sky, but it had been joined by a gas giant that looked similar to Neptune long before they had even reached Not-Pitch's home. Jack had spent the past few hours just watching it, knowing with a sort of horrible certainty that he wasn't home. He wasn't somewhere deep Underhill that had weird purple grass. He was on some other planet - no, he was on the moon of some weird gas giant, wondering what the hell had happened to him, and how was he supposed to go home. He didn't even know if the fact that Pitch wasn't even Pitch was comforting or not. Pitch was actually some sort of general named Kozmotis Pitchner, and... Well, he hadn't seemed all that happy with taking Jack home with him. 

Jack had heard stories of the Golden Age from Pitch, about the man he had been before the fearlings had possessed him. In any other setting, Jack thought he might have appreciated meeting Kozmotis, but the fact that he knew how his story ended just made him really uncomfortable. Actually, now that he thought about it, the setting was probably even worse than knowing what happened to Kozmotis. He didn't think he wanted to be around for the end of the Golden Age. He liked to think that he would warn them about what was to come, if he got the chance. It was too bad that Kozmotis couldn't understand what he said. 

The sun was sinking gloriously on the horizon, hours after he had come to the balcony, but it didn't look like it would be dark anytime soon, with the planet in the sky reflecting the sun's light in a bright crescent of blue. When Kozmotis came up to the balcony, Jack was hanging upside down from the railing by his knees while watching the sunset. The man just stood there quietly for a while, having already, presumably, sent his daughter to bed. Then again, it was difficult to say even that much. As human as Pitch acted sometimes, he and his daughter were, on some level, fairly obviously not human, and had never been human to begin with. Between that, and the fact that this was an entirely different age, Jack had no idea about any of the cultural habits Kozmotis and his daughter might have. 

"It would be rude," the man said quietly, not actually looking at Jack, "to leave you to fend for yourself for the night." Jack listened to him, clutching the hobbyhorse to his chest. The toy had quickly become a crutch in the place of his staff, and he couldn't bear to let go of it yet. "I have a guest room, with a nice bed. It is nothing fancy, but... It's better than sleeping outside." 

"I'd rather sleep in a tree," Jack snorted. And it was true enough. Rough bark beneath his hands was comforting, a reminder of home. "But this will do in a pinch," he added, sitting abruptly upright, and then draping himself on the rail like a particularly thin branch, still clinging to the hobbyhorse with one hand. He made it obvious that he was getting settled in, too, much to Kozmotis's displeasure. "It doesn't take much to make me happy..." 

The sound that came from the man's throat was probably affronted dignity, and Kozmotis explained, still quiet, that he couldn't leave Jack outside, because... and it grew unclear here, but it was something about his neighbors. A cultural thing, Jack suspected. He got the impression that if Kozmotis left him outside, it would be rude, not to Jack, but to Kozmotis's neighbors. Jack laughed. 

"No, no, I'm fine out here. I'll just..." He made as if to settle down further, then squawked when he was lifted from the rail by the back of his pants. "No, I'm fine here! Put me down!" He protested loudly all the way to the guest room, where a strange but comfortable bed awaited amidst alien décor. 

* * *

Jack was beginning to understand Pitch's sleeping habits a bit more. The boogeyman slept perhaps three times per fortnight, somewhere between fourteen and twenty hours at a time. When he was particularly lazy, he'd sleep a full day. Either way, he was extremely unpredictable. At the moment, Jack was guessing that this world's day/night cycle was nearly five times that of Earth, and that comparatively, his human sleeping habits made him look like a cat to the locals. Throughout the early part of the day, Kozmotis seemed concerned with Jack's six hour catnaps, and as the sun edged toward its zenith, he was in the middle of another one, lying on a bench in Kozmotis's garden. 

Kozmotis had an odd house, but it was mixed in with hundreds of other odd looking houses, so it fit right in. The windows were brightly colored, and Jack thought that they had a sense of movement to them, but wasn't quite sure. It had been cooler inside the house, either way, and Jack was miserable where he was. Also, he was also covered in butterflies. They were pretty, and their wings beat coolly against his face and hands and feet. He was confused as to why there were butterflies - he wasn't well versed in biological sciences, but parallel evolution seemed unlikely in the cases of both of insects and bipedal primates. Just one is unlikely. Two, though? 

With a grunt, Jack summoned up a touch of his core power, freezing his skin underneath the tiny insect feet, and the butterflies stilled. They were unharmed, he realized a moment later, as their wings began gently beating again. The sudden chill had probably surprised them. "My daughter is amused," said Kozmotis, coming close, and Jack peeled open an eye to glare at him. "She told me that you had been swallowed by her butterflies." 

"Uh huh," Jack grunted. "It's too warm..." He sighed and shifted irritably. The day was not looking good. It looked a little like twenty-four or more hours until sunset and the hope of a cool breeze. "I'm dying," he groaned, letting his arm fall from the bench to brush the ground. "How much longer will this heat go on?" 

"I..." Kozmotis stopped, like something had caught in his throat, and Jack looked up at him to find the man's golden eyes narrowed on him. "I understood that. And I do suspsect you of being overdramatic." 

_Overdramatic?_ Jack thought, perking up slightly. _Anyone who could_ become _Pitch has no right to call_ me _overdramatic._ "Hey, yay," he said, grinning. "I don't suppose you could tell me how much longer until it'll cool down, can you?" 

"Quite some time," Kozmotis admitted with a smile that was little more than a curl of his lip. Pitch and Emily smiled for much the same reasons that humans did, so it made sense, Jack supposed, that Kozmotis might do the same thing. Then again, it might have been a learned behavior that they picked up from Jökul, so... There was that. "It's cooler inside." The words could have sounded coaxing, but they really didn't. 

"I don't really like being indoors too much." He wiggled his toes, disturbing the congregated butterflies, and sighed. "I don't suppose you normally get snow around here?" he asked, hopeful. He couldn't sense anything like a winter breeze on the entire moon. All the winds felt warm and gentle and _tame_. The question had been completely innocent, if a little whiny, yet Kozmotis's face went blank. 

"We do not. I have seen it on other worlds, however." He got a distant look in his eyes. They weren't the same shade as Pitch's, at all. They were brighter, almost honey colored. Jack almost wanted to ask about it, but there was no way Kozmotis would have any idea what he was talking about. "The world you came from... It must snow there, if you're asking about it." Their eyes met, a clash between calm consideration, and intent focus. Jack got the feeling that Kozmotis didn't like snow. 

"Oh, yeah, definitely," he said. "There's always snow somewhere, because it never fully retreats from the polar icecaps. As a frost spirit, I find that your climate is way uncomfortable, so I'm just... Ugh, melting here..." He trailed off, because the look on Kozmotis's face was similar to the one Pitch got whenever 'that jackal spirit' came up. "What?" 

"A frost spirit, are you? This world hasn't had a frost spirit in a long time." There was something dark about the way Kozmotis said that, and Jack was irritated that he didn't know the man well enough to get the nuances behind what was said. 

"It doesn't have one now," he replied, all honesty. "I would like to go home at some point, but..." Jack adjusted his gaze from Kozmotis's face, to stare at the planet that was looming on the horizon. "Earth revolves around winter. I may not be an important spirit, but it's still home, and there are people who need me." Now that he thought about it, Earth really was Winter's world. Only one of the five cardinal powers of the planet was even local, and that was Jökul, Ymir, who had once, long ago, also been Jack Frost. _The universe really does work in mysterious ways,_ he mused. In a way, that made it _Jack's_ world, even more than it being his home. "I'm getting the feeling that it'll be difficult to go home, though." 

"What makes you think that?" asked Kozmotis, and he was doing this weird stoic thing that Jack found irritating. There was a reason that Jack didn't usually get along with soldier types. Especially ones with rank. They all had this attitude like they had to contain themselves, and somehow, it grated on Jack's nerves. 

"I'm very far from home, General," he stated flatly. "And it's more than physically. I have every reason to believe that I'm in an entirely different time period than that which I left." Kozmotis just stood there, looking skeptical, and Jack had to blink when a butterfly stepped in his eye. Carefully, silently, he mouthed the letters "F M L," because yeah, that's how it feels to have a butterfly step in your eye. It was a strange sensation, and he had had no reason to believe that it would ever happen to him, yet, today, here it was, because Jack's life was freaking awesome. "So, we have hours before it cools down..." 

Kozmotis was still staring down at him, but his expression shifted subtly, as if Jack made no sense. "It will be quite some time," he repeated. "I have errands to run. Please behave until I return." Then the man turned abruptly away, and left without another word. 

He could sense Emily watching him from the house, but the girl didn't seem to want to come out and talk to him. Every now and then, he could see her peeking through the colored windows, her dark hair in a cloud around her head, before she ducked away again. "Whelp," Jack muttered, disturbing a butterfly that had decided that his lips were an inviting place to rest, "it's good to know that some things don't change..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, it hasn't occured to Jack yet to wonder why Koz could suddenly understand him when he couldn't before.


	4. Report

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Koz reports to a former-superior, and returns home. So exciting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to give an explanation to Marvel-esque Allspeak. Idek. Because that's what I'm using here.

* * *

Frost spirit. That pale, cheerful, benign, _wild_ creature was a frost spirit. Kozmotis was occasionally paranoid, certainly, but in this case he felt justified. Frost spirit. It just kept repeating in his head. He had never met a spirit of ice who was anything short of violent and cruel, and yet... 

This one's emotions remained in a consistently - not passive, but certainly benign, yet frustrated place. Nature spirits tended to reflect the elements of nature they represented, and... This particular frost spirit had a warm personality. In spite of knowing he was in an awkward position, he smiled readily. When things didn't go his way, he... What? What had he done when Kozmotis pulled him from the balcony? He hadn't wanted to leave that place, but he showed it by grabbing every little thing he could to stop Kozmotis from dragging him along, just shy of anything harmful. He didn't even grab anything that could have been broken. It was strangely considerate. Kozmotis had had worse _noble_ guests. 

How could he look at that spirit, the one that had laid quietly beneath hundreds of butterflies, and think of him as anything other than benign? It was ridiculous, to think that creature was dangerous, yet... Frost spirit. Kozmotis argued with himself about it, and decided that it didn't matter. Should it turn out that he had misjudged the spirit, he hadn't left Emily alone. His good friend Riff was just as likely as not to be interested in Kozmotis's visitor, even if he wouldn't venture into his backyard to talk to him. If the spirit went inside... that was an entirely different deal. There was always the possibility that Riff wouldn't be very happy with Kozmotis not warning him that the spirit in the garden was a frost spirit of all things. 

The errands that he spoke of were by no means fabricated, although if the spirit hadn't mentioned what he was, Kozmotis might have put it off a little longer. He had put them off long enough as it was, wanting to actually talk to his... guest, before taking care of this bit of business. "Frost spirit," he repeated, to the general in charge of the nearest station. The various high ranking officials were busy in his absence, it seemed, but General Lar cleared his evening to talk to his one-time protégé. For being a knee-high felinoid, the older general was actually an excellent warrior who was just as likely to go for your kneecaps first. Kozmotis was torn as to whether or not he was glad that the diminutive general was able to make time for him. "Temporally displaced. By all appearances, benign." He thought about what else he needed to add. Ah, right. "It is quite possible that the Tsar's grandfather had something to do with his appearance." He and the Tsar might share that bit of ancestry, but Kozmotis didn't have to admit it. "Should there be any further developments, I'll come back in. We... might want someone to question him. That is all." 

Cat green eyes slanted up at him from behind a large desk. The desk was meant for someone of Kozmotis's stature, and he had to wonder just what Lar thought he was proving by using it. "You took him to your house?" the cat asked skeptically. "Are you sure you haven't been bewitched?" 

That was a thought that Kozmotis _had_ been entertaining, though he didn't say so. Instead he found himself snarking right back at his mentor, "Well, I wouldn't know, now, would I?" 

"If you have been, it sure hasn't affected your asinine personality." Lar hummed softly for a moment. In spite of his words, he obviously didn't mind Kozmotis's... it wasn't insubordination anymore, it was just rudeness, but he obviously didn't mind it. "Next time, send Riff. You aren't supposed to be working. Leave the paperwork where it is - don't even think to touch it. Now go home and spend time with your spaw... daughter. Out out out!" 

* * *

Much to his surprise, the figure beneath the butterflies was still laying on the bench when he returned. His daughter immediately dragged him to the back window to make him look, giggling all the while. Riff, as though he hadn't noticed anything amiss with the spirit, commented that it seemed as though the spirit hadn't slept in years, and clucked his tongue disapprovingly. "Then again, perhaps he's from a planet with a different rotation." Which did explain a few things, and Kozmotis wondered why he hadn't thought about that himself. "And the butterflies have barely moved, the entire time. It's uncanny. I've never seen them do that before." 

"He said the heat's bothering him," Kozmotis said, observing the figure as well as he could through the obscuring insects. "As for why he's sleeping so much, your theory is sound. He was up all weird hours of the night, and has been sleeping for a good share of the afternoon." He sighed, and in a hesitantly asked, "Have you noticed anything about him that seems... off? I'm hoping for your unbiased opinion, especially if you haven't actually spoken to him yet." There was no chance that the pooka wouldn't be able to sense some of his underlying concerns, but Riff would humor him, for the moment. 

"He's quite still," Riff sniffed, the whiskers bunching up in his cheeks. "The butterflies certainly seem to like him, and he seems not to mind them. Is he some kind of nature spirit?" 

"Yes," he agreed, and pet Emily's hair when she started dragging at his hand for his attention. "Would you like to hazard a guess as to what kind?" He smiled when he asked the question, because he already knew Riff was going to be wrong. 

It was Riff's turn to become hesitant. "Elemental? I don't think he's anything like what we have here on Erosa, though. Say what you will, this world was tamed long ago, and..." His ears twitched back and forth, as he tried to let his less physical senses get a read on the spirit. "There's something feral about him. And that's really the best I can judge without talking to him. As for guessing... I would like to say water, or perhaps air." 

Kozmotis waited a beat. Water and air were the closest Riff would get, but they were still so far off... "Frost," he said quietly, and watched Riff's ears flatten back against his head and his eyes, already quite large, widen impossibly. "That's what he said, anyway. Yet, I feel like that isn't quite right. There must be something else..." Outside, the frost spirit sat abruptly upright, coughing. Much to his amusement, Kozmotis actually saw a butterfly ejected from the his mouth. All the other butterflies had lifted into a cloud of color, and eventually settled high above the cursing spirit, in the trees. He made what was probably considered a rude gesture, even as he lifted slightly into the air. "I just realized... I never asked his name." 

Riff squawked at him, for even considering such a rude question. "Koz! If you do that, I'm washing my hands of this, right here, right now! A stars blighted frost spirit! You can't be serious! Sure, he seems benign now," he said, gesturing out the window to where the spirit was now standing on the back of the bench, still making rude gestures at the butterflies, even as some decided to ignore his sudden flurry of motion and return to land on him, "but if you go out of your way to be rude, he might change his mind. He may not even seem all that powerful, but if he's capable of even a small blast of ice..." Riff fluttered, and Emily made an odd noise, prompting Kozmotis to visually check on her. She scowled up at him, looking disturbingly like her mother, as Riff continued his rant. "And you let him in your house... What is wrong with you?! When you went on leave, did your common sense abandon you?" 

He had to work to keep from smiling. Between Riff's words and Emily's look - she was definitely growing into her mother's disappointed stare - he found it growing more and more difficult. "I wasn't even aware that he was a frost spirit until this afternoon," he said, not in his defense, but merely as an observation. "Besides, he doesn't have to answer if I ask. I wouldn't _compel_ him to answer me." It wasn't beyond his abilities to do so, either, but that was a faux pas he never intended to commit. And he could easily see how that would anger even the most easy going of spirits. Names were sacred. Even Kozmotis, with his heathen ways, knew that. His daughter didn't seem convinced, though, and was still giving him that look. 

The spirit seemed to notice, finally, that he was being observed, and turned to give them a toothy grin and a cheery wave. As though eschewing the pathway completely, he leapt from the bench to the edge of a fountain - not allowing the wind to lift him again - and then crossed the water, ice forming where his feet touched. Emily watched, fascinated, and so did Kozmotis - after all, this playful behavior didn't seem like any of the frost spirits that he had seen, and he had never seen ice magic used similarly. At the nearest edge of the fountain, the spirit paused, looking around, and spotted something that Kozmotis could only think of as lawn art (not particularly good lawn art, either, that had been left over by the previous owner of the property) and leapt again, landing delicately on top of it. Emily giggled, and Kozmotis smoothed the hair on top of her head in a gesture that was meant to be soothing for himself. 

"I can't be that interesting," said the spirit, once he had gotten close enough for casual conversation. His voice carried easily through the window, and he arched one dark eyebrow at Kozmotis and Riff, who he stared at for a long moment, head cocked, eyes blinking. He poked at the window in between them and startled backward when his finger sunk into it, freezing a chunk of it to fall out. "What the? It's water!" He laughed, delighted. The timid finger returned in a flash, and whipped across the window's surface quickly, as he grinned. When he stopped, there was an icy image hanging in the clear moving water, from one side of the window to the other. It looked like mountains, perhaps, and the spirit said, cockily, "Aha! A masterpiece!" 

Before Kozmotis could stop her, Emily reached out and touched the image, and exclaimed, "It's cold!" and the delicate rime crumbled beneath her fingers. 

The spirit clasped his hands to his face and gasped, "Oh no!" While his face was the very picture of distress, all Kozmotis could sense from him was playful joy and a thrill of amusement. He was teasing Emily, whose senses weren't nearly as developed as her father's. 

She fell for it, and exclaimed, worriedly, "Oh no!" in a perfect echo of the frost spirit, who immediately giggled. 

"No, I'm just kidding," he told her, expression morphing back into a grin. 

"That's not nice!" she pouted. Riff smothered a chuckled of his own, and Kozmotis eyed him sidelong. 

"It occurs to me," Kozmotis said, and the spirit paused, looking back at him instead of Emily, "that I never got your name." He wasn't even asking directly, in an attempt to be diplomatic. 

While the spirit was still amused, there was the hint of disbelief in the tone of it now. "Subtlety you have not," the spirit snorted. "But, you know, I've never been one to get my panties in a twist over that sort of thing, so, you know, all is forgiven, and all that. Jack Frost; I already know your name, and Emily's, so... Who's the rabbit?" 

Rabbit wasn't a word that they were familiar with, but Kozmotis did know of small, fluffy rodents that were similar enough to rabbits that the connection wouldn't matter. So when Jack said "rabbit", he found himself thinking of those creatures, and if he were to say his people's word for them, all Jack would hear would be "rabbit". Higher sentients were capable of synchronizing with the worlds they visited, and it worked with everything but the most minor of spirits, too. The strange phenomenon that erased language barriers was referred to as "Allspeak", and while it didn't pick up all the slack, it was incredibly useful. And the use of the word "rabbit" to describe Riff was downright hilarious, to the point of Kozmotis having a hard time controlling his face again. Riff, on the other hand, was giving him strange and insulted looks. "It's Riff," said the pooka, scowling back and forth between both Kozmotis and Jack. 

Jack Frost tilted his head from side to side, then leaned forward to examine the pooka more closely. "You look like this guy I know, except, he's gray, and usually naked, except for a bandolier." That didn't sound like a close resemblance to Kozmotis, but who was he to say? Perhaps Jack hadn't seen many pookas - not that there _were_ many pookas to see. The spirit was obviously unaware that that could have been offensive. He still held that air of amusement. "And hey, you know what? It's cooled down a little, so I feel better." This was, seemingly, directed at Kozmotis himself. "Although, I'll probably sleep again before you do, if this is anything like yesterday." 

Kozmotis turned to Riff, keeping his hand on Emily's head, even as she poked her cold finger at the remnants of ice in the window, and said, "He sleeps a lot." 

"I noticed," drolly replied the pooka. 

Jack frowned. "It's not my fault you have really long days... I was trying to calculate it earlier, but I won't be able to come to a conclusion until the sun goes down again. All I know is that I'm used to a lot shorter days. But it does explain a few things." He rolled his shoulders in a noncommittal gesture and pursed his lips. "Although... Hmmm. I was planning to ask a few questions, but maybe I'll do it later. I'd really like to go home, and I'm not sure if I've been here too long already, or if I'm actually supposed to be here. I mean, Pitch never did say anything, but who knows what he remembers, right? He's all, tragic past and all that, underneath the drama, so it's not like I ever pried." At that, as if to point out the lie of his words, Jack's cheeks tinged pinker than they already had been, and he seemed to grope for a way to continue that. "I mean, I didn't pry without permission. Technically, I had permission!" His enthusiasm suggested that he greatly regretted prying into whatever he had, and his embarrassment... Kozmotis wondered what, exactly, he had pried into that brought on that kind of embarrassment. 

Riff coughed, drawing their attention. "Who, exactly, is this Pitch?" he asked, glancing at Kozmotis, who, in turn, arched an eyebrow at Jack... who gave Kozmotis an odd, darting look before turning thoughtful. 

Jack's hands splayed out helplessly and he shrugged his shoulders again. "That's what I can't seem to figure out a way to explain," he apologized. "It's not like I haven't tried. I mean, I have, in my head, but..." He sighed and made complicated faces at them. "I tried really hard, and I just don't know how to say it in a believable way." He was sincere. It was strange, just how sincere he was. 

_Frost spirit,_ he reminded himself. Eventually, Kozmotis offered, "Come inside, and have dinner with us. In the meantime, you can think over what it is that you want to say."


	5. Jack's Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack tells Kozmotis a few things he's heard about the Golden Age, and finds out that even he might know more about how to deal with fearlings than the Lord High General.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long. I'm having a hard time directing my writing lately... Heheh. This was already mostly done.

* * *

Dinner consisted of a strange salad that tasted greener than it looked, bread that tasted strong and vinegary, something soft and red that turned out to taste similar to pickled beets - which Jack actually liked - and something that he hoped was fish. It sort of tasted like fish. The texture was similar, even. Never in his life had he been so glad that he didn't actually need to eat. It was only the second time in what was approximately the Earth equivalent of a week that he actually sat and ate with them, but he was doubtful that he would ever get used to the food. If it looked like something familiar, it damned well wasn't going to taste that way. 

He wasn't at all certain of where to start with his story. "So, I did mention that I'm not in the right time period, right? Or, rather, I think I said that I had reason to believe that I wasn't?" Koz - because even in Jack's head, Kozmotis was too long of a name - made an agreeable sound in the back of his throat, and Jack snorted, picking at something leafy that reminded him of watercress, tastewise. "Because I'd heard your name before, in one of Pitch's stories. He was telling me about what he called the Golden Age, and how, ah, how it ended, I guess." _Great,_ he congratulated himself sarcastically, _Jack, you really are an excellent storyteller._

"And this Golden Age is..?" Koz prompted, spearing a not-beet on a three tined fork. 

"Considering that you and Emily are here, and Emily is... well, little... I would assume that it's now." He nibbled at the not-watercress for a moment before he realized that they were waiting for him to continue. "According to Pitch's story, he was _you_ , so... Ah, hell." Jack sighed. They could have picked someone better at storytelling for this. Sure, he was good at entertaining kids, but... He glanced at Emily, who was blowing bubbles into a drink and staring at him with those big, golden eyes. He knew that he couldn't straight up tell them that Kozmotis had become the thing that destroyed the age, not with her looking at him like that. But how could he get it across to them without directly saying it? "He said that, near the end of the Golden Age, he became a spirit and took on a new name. That name was Pitch Black, and after that... It wasn't long after that that... ah... yeah." 

Something in Koz's expression told him that the man had understood what he was trying to say. "Was it the fearlings?" he asked, quietly, and Emily's wide eyes turned to him. 

"...sort of? It was a Nightmare Man. One they called the Nightmare King, he was so powerful. The biggest problem with this particular Nightmare Man," Jack said, wetting his lips, "was that they couldn't wait him out. He wasn't converting. His will was too strong, or something, and the fearlings couldn't turn him into one of them, no matter how long they possessed his body." Jack had only ever run into a fearling one time, and it had been so, so easily killed. He wondered that they had ever been a problem. "I can see why large number of them might be an issue," he said, "but individually, they're kinda pathetic. The problem with the Nightmare King, though, is that he was possessed by a legion of them, and... Well, he was very good at what he did." 

Both Koz and Riff were staring at him, with their eyes wide. After a pregnant pause, during which they turned to each other to communicate with their eyeballs, Koz turned back to him and said, "Have you ever fought a fearling, Jack?" 

Jack snorted. "Once," he said, drolly. "There used to be a lot of them on Earth, apparently. Most of them were killed off before I was born though. They had all been contained to a single body, or most of them had, anyway, and were somehow released, and Pitch took great pleasure hunting them down. Nowadays, they're so rare that it's hard to find them. Probably because they're so easy to kill. I mean, they're great at hiding, but I've heard that they always attack before they can reamass their legion. So... you get the picture?" He chuckled, recalling a humorous tale in one of the books he had found that detailed the weaknesses of certain monsters. "There's this one story, about this monkey," he said, grinning, and when he remembered where the story went, he stopped. "And that's all I'm saying, because there's a child present. I'm too young to know this story." He collapsed against the table, still laughing. "And it was illustrated..!" 

Koz and Riff were still staring, but Jack didn't care. It was Riff who spoke this time. "I certainly haven't found them so easy to kill." His tone was harsh and confused, and when Jack looked at him, he could see that Riff was actually slightly upset. 

"Sorry," Jack said, trying to straighten his face and failing. "You guys don't... You don't know how to kill them?" 

"We know some ways," Koz replied, glancing between him and Riff, and finally his daughter. 

"Ah..." Biting his lip, Jack thought back on all the books he read that mentioned fearlings. "They're weak to certain types of wood, running water, salt, iron, silver, anything that's blessed, most types of natural light... certain herbs..." He gnawed at his lip, and it was growing raw beneath his teeth. "Blunt force. I'm sure there's some things I'm not listing, but it's not like I memorized this stuff. I just read it. Oooh, ooooh, also, happy flakes. Not sure anyone but me can make those, though. Also, it didn't actually kill them, it just stopped them long enough for me to apply blunt force." He learned other ways later, once he read up on them. "Now that I think about it," he said, frowning, "I ran into a town once that I think might have been turning into fearlings. It was... creepy." And Reverend Stampington had been such a nice man. Jack will never not feel sorry for that guy. 

And... they were still staring. Riff was even gaping, a little. "Koz," said the pooka, sounding stunned, "do you think he's..." _telling the truth,_ Jack read into the pause. 

"You certainly think you know this," Koz said, again glancing at Emily, who was weirdly quiet through this whole thing. There was something gleeful in the little girl's expression, like she was accomplishing some monumentous task. It was the same look that Mother Nature got just before dinner mysteriously imploded. Jack had only seen that look once, but he knew it. He knew that it was the same look. Grown up Emily was accomplished at many things. Cooking was not one of them. 

"All the books I've ever read about them has indicated that even plants on Earth evolved to kill fearlings." The smile he gave them was a little evil, he supposed, but he wasn't lying. "Rowan, yew, oak and ash trees, rose bushes, holly, thistle, sage, basil, flax, ivy, and even dandelions, a common weed, could be used against fearlings... Any plant that any religion views as holy - on Earth anyway - could be used against fearlings." He patted the hobbyhorse that he had kept at his side since coming to this place, and said, "I'm pretty sure that this is made from oak, even though it's a toy... and my staff was made from ash... even though I don't have it now..." Yep, more wide-eyed stare. "It makes sense, in a way. Mother Nature's father was taken by fearlings. Of course she nurtured a world that was hostile to them. It's too bad that it's not around in this time." 

Slowly, Riff turned to Kozmotis. "You're going to have him interrogated, right?" 

"Hey! I'm right here!" Jack protested. "You're supposed to wait until I'm not supposed to hear you - like when you're almost, but not quite, out of earshot. You know, for drama." 

A little smirk played across Koz's lips. "He's right." It was all he said, but he was looking at Riff almost expectantly. 

"No." Scowling looked really funny on the pooka's face. Unlike Bunny, Riff didn't seem like he was meant for it. For one thing, his eyebrows were finer, for another, he had a face that looked like it was supposed to be smiling. "I'm not pandering to your sense of drama. Either of you. And do you know how strange that is, scolding both of you like you're the same person?" 

"Are you calling me mature?" Jack asked, mildly offended. "I'm technically a kid, you know. I don't plan on growing up, so you can forget whatever it is you're thinking. That guy," he gestured at Koz, "is like... I don't know... middle aged or something. So we can't be anything like the same person." 

Riff was quiet for a moment, before he let out a defeated sigh. "I don't even know how you got that." 

"This old guy has to put his daughter to bed," Koz said, standing up, and Emily protested, loudly, even as he picked her up. It reminded Jack, oddly enough, of Emily picking up her youngest child by the back of his pants after leaving him for a day or two with his grandpa. Tidus would make very similar sounds to the ones Emily made as Koz carried her away, likely taking her to bathe, as a good parent would. 

Riff made the classic "I've got my eyes on you" gesture, and Jack squawked. "Seriously? Does every rabbit feel like they have to do this to me? I haven't had the time to plan for any pranks yet, so you can cool your jets, Hawkeye." The expression on Riff's face was gratifying, and Jack decided to escape before Koz could come and tell him that he had to sleep in the bed again. Instead, he flitted out into the nighttime garden, to find a comfortable tree. He would probably wake up super early by local standards, but he didn't see any reason to curb his sleeping habits. 

* * *

_How is it,_ Kozmotis wondered, _that her hair is like this, yet her dress seems almost clean?_ Whatever it was, in her hair, it was thick and gummy, sticky and blue, and _he hadn't seen it_ until he lifted the huge mess of her hair when helping her out of her dress. "What is this..?" he asked, sniffing at it reluctantly. 

"Riff let me fingerpaint while you were gone," she said, touching a toe to the water in the bath. 

He sniffed it again, just to make sure, and said, "That's not paint." 

She touched her toe to the water again. And again, carefully balancing on the other foot. Then, with childish swiftness, before he could stop her, she leapt into the water, causing it to spray out of the tub, all over him and the bathroom floor. As she settled primly into the water, she said, "Well, if it isn't paint, I don't know what it is." 

He sniffed at it for a third time, and it remained unidentified. There was something familiar about that smell though. Realization dawned, and he jerked back, scrambling for shampoo. In the scramble, right as he grasped the bottle, he slipped and his knee slammed hard into the edge of the tub. Tears sprang up at the edges of his eyes and he had to fight to contain the curse words that wanted to slip out. He was not going to cuss in front of Emily, especially when she eyed him with that speculative gleam in her eyes, like she knew what he wanted to say. "We need to trim your hair," he decided, once he could speak without something unintended escaping. "Maybe, to your shoulders." 

She clearly didn't believe him. Although, that might have to do with the fact that he had made that threat before. He leaned forward, careful on the one knee, and ended up slipping again at the next words out of her mouth. "I think Jack would make a great mommy." This time, he cracked his chin. 

He wasn't going to cry. Kozmotis was a general. He went out on the front lines, regularly. He escaped most battles with less bruising than he got trying to bathe a four year old girl. The worst part of it was that her only weapon was her words. "Why do you do this to Daddy?" he asked, brushing his knuckles over the newly forming bruise on his chin. 

"Daddy, you're just clumsy. Besides, I think great-grampa did good. Jack knows lots, so he can help you and Riff." She seemed so sure of herself, and for once, she was calmly sitting in the water, not splashing around like a crazed baby bird. He intended to take advantage of this while it lasted. 

"Grandfather better not have done this," Kozmotis sighed, trying to soap the absolutely disgusting mess of blue out of her hair. It slowly died beneath tons of shampoo. 

* * *

The next morning, Kozmotis woke up extra early to take a shower before his daughter got up. His knee still ached, and his chin was still bruised, but he managed to get to the bathroom without incident. He had cleaned up the floor before going to bed, so he didn't slip, and there was no sign of that blue crud in the tub. He had barely washed the sleep from his eyes when his hand closed around the bottle that held the shampoo. It was light. Lighter than it should have been. There was barely enough for his own hair, and as he scrubbed at it, he wondered why he went through shampoo so quickly when he was home. He could have sworn that he had bought this bottle the day he met Jack, making it a little over a day old. 

He was going to have to go and buy more today, he realized. Maybe he should buy several bottles. His leave lasted for several more days, so he would probably need it. And he had to make arrangements, he realized, for dealing with Jack. It wouldn't do to leave him here at loose ends, and Emily had been right. If Jack's knowledge was legitimate, he would be very useful. 

First things first, though. He had to go shopping. Again.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, questions, comments, prompts and concerns can be voiced either here, or anonymously at [my blog](http://asknotbug.tumblr.com). I will always reply, unless the system eats your message.


End file.
